Have you ever been walking down the street on a day when it felt like your world would end, and a total stranger said “Smile; it can’t be that bad.” How would they know? Yeah, it can be that bad. And you have a perfect right to your feelings. While sadness is no excuse to be rude to others, I personally don’t see a need to appear totally cheerful 100 percent of the time. That is simply not realistic. Maybe you just had an ugly spat with someone dear to you. Or you learned your best friend has Parkinson’s. Maybe it’s just a pile of smaller things that have taken their toll. Whatever you feel is genuine.
This stranger may feel he or she is doing a genuine kindness to suggest you smile. Or they may just be uncomfortable with your sadness. But how they feel is their problem, not yours. Just as how you feel is not their issue (unless you choose to share it).
All your feelings matter. And they all need to be acknowledged, even the negative ones. If we don’t find some way to honor our negative feelings, we are too likely to keep them inside. Which leads to flattening all the emotions, good and bad, and can even lead to a general feeling of melancholy.
Infants and young children’s emotions have a tendency to “turn on a dime.” They may be laughing, then suddenly in tears, or vice versa. But there is no question about what they are feeling; it’s right out there. Then they get a little older, and they sometimes show frustration by acting out, and the adults in their world have the dubious privilege of interpreting this behavior.
If you are reading this, you have presumably reached adulthood. Which is certainly no guarantee of having it all figured out. All those years you were a child and figured that once you were 18 or 21 or whatever, you would always know what to do. But one thing is simple, though not always easy: Honor your feelings and those of others. Feel free to talk about them with someone you trust. When you can get the negative feelings out of the way–sadness, frustration, anger–in constructive ways, the happiness will be so much greater. Try it; you might free yourself to feel as playful as the little guy in the picture.